


Known and the Unknown

by Evandar



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula Untold (2014)
Genre: F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, POV Outsider, Post-Movie(s), Recovered Memories, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 04:19:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5729287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s not sure, she explains drunkenly to John one night, if she should be nauseated by how sickeningly sweet Mina’s new beau seems to be, or if she should be worried that he’s trying to cover something up by being <i>the</i> most stereotypically romantic man on earth. </p><p>Or: There's something wrong with Mina's new bloke. Worse, there's something wrong with Lucy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Known and the Unknown

A bouquet of roses beats Mina to the office. Lucy signs for them, and – unable to stop herself – checks the card nestled between snow white petals for a name. She’s rewarded with what looks like a line of poetry, and she rolls her eyes before placing the bouquet on Mina’s desk. 

She’ll just have to wait for the story instead.

At least she knows that they aren’t from Jonathan. He’s not the type to buy flowers from anywhere except the petrol station, and he’s _definitely_ not into poetry. Especially not the obscure types that Mina likes. But Mina hasn’t mentioned anyone new in her life, nor has she been acting like a woman with a secret – and Lucy has known Mina for years, and she’s _terrible_ at keeping secrets – and that ridiculous bouquet and its soft, pervasive scent soon turn into the biggest distraction Lucy has ever faced.

She abandons the pretence of getting anything done. She shuffles the papers she has on her desk to look busy, answers the phone when she has to, and sends covert glances between the roses and the office door. She Googles the poetry. It’s something medieval and Islamic and so romantic that it makes Lucy’s heart flutter.

When Mina finally arrives, she’s smiling. She’s smiling like she doesn’t _know_ that she’s smiling, and it’s infuriating, because that means that she really _has_ met someone after leaving work yesterday and that the bloke has actually _sent her flowers_ like that’s a thing that people do. She spots the flowers in an instant. She crosses to her desk, and the poetry on the card must be instantly recognisable to _her_ because her expression softens in a way that makes Lucy sigh with longing.

She covers it with a cough.

“So he moves fast, then,” she says.

Mina jumps. She actually jumps, as if she hasn’t come into work every day to find Lucy already at her desk for the last three years. She laughs it off, of course, and sits down to start her computer up, but she doesn’t let go of the card.

“It’s not like that,” she says. “I only met him last night.”

“That’s how I got with Quincey, remember?” And Lord, hadn’t that been a wild couple of months. “Without the flowers.” And the poetry – but she won’t mention that. Mina likes to pretend that there’s still _some_ boundaries. 

And Mina laughs. She’s bright and happy – certainly happier than she has been for months, and happier than Jonathan ever made her – and Lucy’s only a _tiny_ bit jealous.

“It’s not like that at all,” Mina tells her. “We only went for a drink. Talked. He didn’t even hold my hand.” She runs her thumb over the writing on the card. “He’s a gentleman.”

…

They’ve been friends for most of their lives. 

She first met Mina when she was seven, when the Murrays moved into the house down the lane, and she’d immediately felt like she’d known her for her whole life. Mina had had hair long enough to sit on, back then, and she’d told everyone who would listen that she’d be a princess one day. Mina always wore long dresses. She learned embroidery from Lucy’s Granny because, she’d claimed, princesses needed to be accomplished.

Accomplished. Modest. Chaste – even in high school, she’d never really been interested in dating. Well-read. 

They’d gone to different universities. Mina had gone off to Cambridge, while Lucy – suffering from poorer grades and greater apathy – had found herself in Newcastle. They’d drifted apart. Looking back, Lucy remembers her summers as riotous parties in Ibiza and Laos. She remembers the crush of bodies at festivals and the feel of mud between her toes. Sun, sea, and sex. And vodka. And a huge, gaping hole where her best friend had been.

She’d never been more surprised than the day she walked into her brand new office in a swanky London high-rise to be greeted by an equally startled Mina. A Mina with _short_ hair. A Mina who wasn’t married off to either Wills _or_ Harry, but one who had settled for some boring pillock who worked as a solicitor.

And it was like they’d never parted, really. Beneath the sensible new ‘do, Mina still dreamed of gowns and castles. She still woke up screaming from nightmares about falling. And Lucy…Lucy was still half-jealous of her friend who could have done anything, and half in love with her at the same time.

…

A new bouquet of flowers arrives every week. Always, _always_ , accompanied by poetry – usually from that same poet. Lucy becomes well acquainted with the works of Rumi through her nosiness, and in the end she finds she likes him so much that she orders a book of his works from Amazon. She reads it over three consecutive nights, accompanied by three consecutive bottles of rosé, and wishes that John was the kind of guy to send _her_ this sort of thing. Just…maybe not so frequently.

She learns mystery man’s name: Vlad. She learns that he’s very foreign – bloody _Transylvanian_ \- and very rich. He’d have to be, to buy so many roses, especially at London prices. She watches as the roses he sends gradually change colour from white to darkest, richest blood red, with heavy petals textured like velvet. She listens to stories about the opera, and stage plays, and meals held in darkened restaurants where the clientele are blindfolded to enhance their meals.

She’s not sure, she explains drunkenly to John one night, if she should be nauseated by how sickeningly sweet Mina’s new beau seems to be, or if she should be worried that he’s trying to cover something up by being _the_ most stereotypically romantic man on earth. 

Either way, he has style.

“Do _you_ want to go to the opera?” is what John answers with, and it’s so far from the response she was expecting that she chokes on her drink. 

“Me?” she says once she’s got her breath back. “No. Not my thing. Which is good, because if he did something fun like take her paintballing or on a weekend in Paris then I’d have to kill myself. Or track him down and kill him. Whatever. What do you think, then? Has Mina actually found Prince Charming? Or is she dating a serial killer? Because I have _no_ clue.”

She doesn’t get any answers from John as to what kind of man this Vlad bloke is, which is fair enough because he hasn’t met him either, but she does get a paintballing weekend she can brag to Mina about.

It’s nice to have the role reversal. It’s nicer still to know that her boyfriend listens to her.

Sometimes.

But something about her vague, drunken suspicions lingers in her mind. She finds herself watching Mina more carefully, trying to find a crack in her happy façade. She doesn’t _mention_ anything to Mina because she doesn’t want to be the one to crack it; she just wants to see if Mina has any suspicions of her own. 

She sees nothing. Nothing at all. And she can’t help but wonder if the woman who constantly second-guessed Jonathan’s oblivious, puppy-eyed devotion has been completely blindsided by something.

…

She meets Vlad for the first time under the fluorescent lights of the office. Mina hasn’t exactly invited him in – he’s waiting for her in one of the squishy chairs by the lift doors – but he’s still there. In _their_ space.

Lucy pokes her head out of the glass doors to offer him a cup of coffee while Mina gets ready for their date – something to do with something, fuck it, she’s allowed to tune out every so often – and she freezes when she sees his face. He’s familiar. Somehow. _Somehow_ , she knows this man from somewhere, even though she could swear that she’s never seen him before in her life.

He’s handsome, with shoulder-length black hair that curls over the rich fabric of his scarf, and frankly stunning features framed with neatly trimmed facial hair. He’s tall too, judging by the way he’s sitting.

But there’s something not right. There’s something _horribly_ not right and she doesn’t know what it is, but it makes her want to run – fast and far away – but he’s in between her and the lift and she’s trying to look all nice and professional in front of Mina’s bloke and –

\- and she’s never been more glad to have someone refuse a drink in her life.

“She’ll just be a minute,” she tells him, and closes the door and _tries_ not to sigh with relief as she returns to her desk.

Her skin _crawls_ when she looks up to see him staring at her through the glass. His eyes are dark. That dark shade of brown that looks almost red in some lights. 

It clicks in her mind. _That_ ’s what’s wrong.

He’s pale, too pale, under the unforgiving halogen. Not sick-pale. She’s seen sick-pale every winter since she started working here; Vlad is paler than anyone has a right to be outside of a morgue. All except for his lips, which are redder than her favourite lipstick, and his eyes. His eyes almost look like they’re _glowing_.

And he’s still _staring_.

Worse, he’s staring like he recognises her too.

She looks away, busying herself with her remaining tasks. Spreadsheets. Usually they bore the pants off her, but now the columns of data are reassuring. She acts like she can’t feel his gaze burning into the side of her head, and when Mina does appear – dazzlingly lovely in a white dress and the ruby necklace Vlad had presented her with the week before – Lucy bids her goodnight and tells her to have fun like everything is normal. Like it didn’t take all of her strength to keep her voice even and a smile on her face.

She slips her phone out of her bag after they’ve vanished into the lift together and sends a message to John.

_I can’t make it tonight. Sorry. Make it up to you next time?_

She can’t stop shaking.

…

She’s still shaking when she arrives home. She locks herself into her apartment, checking that everything is secure before she reaches for the wine. She pours herself a large Chianti and cradles the glass with both hands and takes long, slow sips until the tremors in her hands ease. _Then_ she heads for her jewellery box.

She hasn’t been to church since her Granny died. She’s never been the type to believe in things she can’t see - _that_ was always Mina – but her Granny had been, and it’s her rosary that Lucy reaches for. It’s rosewood and silver, and it’s heavy in her hand. She’s never worn it before, but its weight is nothing but comforting when she slips it over her head. She clutches the cross between her breasts, and feels like she can breathe properly for the first time since meeting Vlad.

Since re-meeting him? She shakes her head and returns to her kitchen. To her wine. 

She’s only had this kind of feeling – the feeling of knowing a complete stranger – once before, and that was with Mina. And Mina, for all her occasional strangeness, has never frightened her. Mina is all warmth and instant trust; Vlad is fear and a twisting in her gut that speaks of betrayal.

She orders a Chinese and finishes the Chianti while she waits. She cracks open a second bottle when it arrives, and drinks it between mouthfuls of spring rolls and kung po. 

…

_She stares at her Prince as he moves through the smoke. She catches his eye. He can smell her lifeblood and he pours his own into her mouth like the Eucharist._

_There are soldiers. Their armour rips beneath her hands and their skin tears between her teeth. Blood, sweeter than wine, fills her mouth and her belly and she tears through man after screaming man as if they are nothing. She hunts. She is strong._

_She burns._

_Her last thought as her body disintegrates in the light, is that her Prince has betrayed her._

…

She wakes with a pounding headache and a crick in her neck. She peels herself off the sofa and staggers into the bathroom. She urinates with the door open and her head cradled in her hands, and when she’s finished, she washes her hands and face in the sink.

When she looks up, her reflection stares back at her with glowing red eyes and blood dripping from her parted lips. She shrieks, staggers back, and crashes into the wall. The monster in the mirror twists – it _hisses_ and God, she can _hear_ it – and fades. Lucy meets her own gaze in horror and sinks to the floor, shaking.

She doesn’t move again until the rising sun sends golden light creeping down her hall. Then she crawls to the phone and calls in sick.

She can’t face her lady today. Mirena - _Mina_ \- her joy will be too much, and Lucy doesn’t think she’ll be able to stop herself from saying something.

…

A pretend case of stomach flu earns her three days to untangle the knot of her memories and steel her resolve. She’s quitting. She loves her job, but she’s quitting. She can’t do this. She can’t. She loves Mina just as she’d loved Lady Mirena, but she will not remain by her side while that monster is there. She can’t.

She fears Vlad and what he will bring far more than she loves anything.


End file.
